Product Managers and Marketers: Ever Feel Like You’re Being Treated Like “The Fighter”?

June 7, 2011

Source: The Fighter official movie website

Or: When Leadership Squanders its Innovative Workers

My wife and I finally watched The Fighter (2010) for the first time on DVD. It’s an exceptional movie based on the true story of Micky Ward, a professional boxer from Lowell, Mass.

Set in the early 1990′s, the film introduces Micky Ward (portrayed by Mark Wahlberg) as an aging boxer whose champion potential is slipping away as trusted family members fail to look out for his best interests.  Between his drug-addicted brother Dicky (Christian Bale) missing training sessions and his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) mismanaging his matches, Micky Ward suffers a series of stinging defeats and considers ending his boxing career.

The Fighter led me to wonder how many people are out there today with similarly high potential being similarly squandered. Does this suggestion ring true to you?

I am certain the vast majority of people (certainly not just product marketers and product managers) have felt the same gnawing cognitive dissonance during their careers that Micky Ward felt: an awareness that one’s work and skills were somehow being stifled, but knowing neither why nor what to do about it.

I believe the root cause behind the vast majority of struggling products (and, therefore, struggling businesses) is people not living up to their potential due to a non-supportive organizational environment. Like Micky Ward’s frustrations early on in The Fighter, the core issue is a pervasive inability of people, starting with the management team, to work with one another effectively and treat each other properly.

There are many types of managerial dysfunctions that contribute to a non-supportive environment that adversely impacts people, which cannot help but adversely impact products. Here are a few that might ring true to you (though I hope not!) …

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My Article Published in Pragmatic Marketing Newsletter

June 3, 2011

The just-published June 2011 edition of Pragmatic Marketing Newsletter includes an article of mine: an extended version of my earlier blog post Play the Product Marketing Game Like a Chess Grandmaster.

Here is a link to the Pragmatic Marketing article, and a link to the original blog post.  Enjoy!


What Flavor is Your Cupcake?

April 17, 2011

Photo by Clare & Dave (Flickr CC)

I’ve been meaning for a while to write about the simple and clever Cake Model for Product Planning, a smart product management methodology by Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path, a user experience (UX) design firm.  The cake model helps launch desirable products as quickly as possible, and in so doing, help customers achieve positive, successful product experiences as quickly as possible as well.

The Adaptive Path Cake Model urges product managers not to try making a big huge honking cake of a product.  That requires baking a very a big cake (on its own, rather plain and dry), then adding some filling, and then some frosting.  Hopefully your target markets are willing and able to wait for all that, and the finally-completed cake is the flavor, texture, etc. they were expecting.

Instead, product managers should first spec out a cupcake of a product that be made relatively quickly, with a small amount of cake complimented with enough filling and frosting to make people want it  – and get value from using it – right away, as is.  Users achieve success and a sense of competency with the product now, and eagerly look forward to enhancements.  For more on the importance of getting your users past the newbie threshhold with your product to passionate user, check out this classic post – one of my favorites from Karhy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog (archive).

One cupcake product model example that comes to mind is the online to-do app TeuxDeux.  Instead of trying to bake the entire cake of “everything” that belongs in a to-do app, TeuxDeux offered up a quick cupcake: a dead-simple online to-do application for people who might find the very wide and deep features of more comprehensive to-do apps like Remember the Milk a bit intimidating.  Users raved about TeuxDeux’s highly intuitive “cupcake,” and have since provided over 10,000 enhancement suggestions, culminating in new online features as well as an iPhone version.

Meanwhile, product marketing managers contribute to the success of the cake model through two primary roles:

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The Impact of Imagination Level on Product Marketers and Managers

March 18, 2011

With thanks to a recent Tweet by Donald Farmer, I recently came across an impressive graphic representation of the increasing degrees of human imagination.

Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination was designed by John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, based on his conversation with Patti Brennan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Similar in design to Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs, the Hierarchy of Imagination is represented as a pyramid progressing from the base of reactionary behavior with little or no imagination (Reflex), proceeding upward to Problem Solving, then Creativity, and finally the pinnacle of “completely unrestrained” Imagination.  It is a very thought-provoking model.

I had a few thoughts related to this Hierarchy of Imagination and the workplace, and product management and marketing in particular. I’d like to know your thoughts as well.

  • The hierarchy should not be interpreted as disparaging jobs in which little creativity or problem solving is expected. What sets a worker in such a job apart from others is the level of wisdom they bring to their job (Read more here). That said, a person in the Reflex category had better not find himself in a Peter Principle job situation and be expected to proactively solve problems or provide creative leadership.
  • Many boss-subordinate conflicts stem from incompatible levels of imagination. A Product Manager who spends his time gathering customer enhancement requests and prioritizing bug fixes (Problem Solving) will likely find himself in trouble with his VP who expects him to creatively identify new, ground-breaking features for the next version of the product. Conversely, a “left brain” business owner who prides herself as a Problem Solver may underappreciate the creative work of her marketing manager. She might be reluctant to attribute new business leads to creative marketing, but be unusually perceptive of flaws in “how” marketing tasks were completed (was paperwork completed properly, did a project merely beat a deadline or was it finished with days to spare, etc.).
  • With the above thought in mind, I read an article linked on John Maeda’s blog on the challenges creative people might face when pursuing leadership roles. I’m willing to wager that many of those surveyed demonstrating ambivalence towards creative people tend to fit into the imagination hierarchy as Problem Solvers themselves, perhaps focused on successful project administration but with less awareness of the creative value and impact of the final project. To paraphrase a passage I recall from a Tom Peters book, “the project was done under budget and ahead of schedule, but no one cared about it.”
  • In fairness to Problem Solvers, creativity needs to be directed carefully. Product manager turned CEO Barbara Tallent warns Product Managers to avoid working on “cool stuff” instead of what customers have already said they need and will pay for. (Read more here).
  • The further you go up the imagination hierarchy, the more vital your skills of persuasion are. In order for a creative person or someone with “completely unconstrained” Imagination to achieve his vision, he will need to effectively brief others in the organization on the merits of that vision and gain their buy-in, enthusiasm and support (Read more here).
  • I liked Patti Brennan’s comment: “teaching creativity doesn’t work but expanding their imaginations might work better.” In her work in patient healthcare, Patti Brennan believes “that in order to get patients to take control of their health, they need to imagine what it looks like to be more healthy.” Indeed, the ability to visualize something better than what you are already doing is vital for creativity. Similarly, creativity requires a capacity to empathize with others, whether we are talking about the health problems of patients or the challenges and frustrations of our customers. Good product managers and product marketing managers can translate their empathy towards what customers are going through into well-defined products and clear, relevant, engaging messaging and content.

I found Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination very insightful and I look forward to reading more from John Maeda’s Creative Leadership blog.

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Is your Product Like “The Fighter”? Are YOU? [Or: When Leadership Squanders its Innovative Workers]

Today’s “New Rules” Marketing Organizations Run Like Winning Football Teams

Innovative Companies Don’t Have Employee “Sediment”


 


Today’s “New Rules” Marketing Organizations Run Like Winning Football Teams

March 4, 2011

Getty Images

I recently read a great Ad Age article by Chris Kuenne, Four [Marketing] Talent Categories You Need to Win in a Connected World.  Recognizing that many marketing organizations still cling to discredited, “old school” marketing and PR, Chris Kuenne provided a timely description of the new talents, skills and attitudes found in today’s “new rules” marketing organizations that are actively contributing to company growth and success.

Chris Kuenne listed four skill categories vital for today’s successful marketing organization – Strategic, Analytic, Program Design and Technological – which, combined with talent-building marketing leadership, will yield well-orchestrated “personally relevant experiences” that “translate the brand promise into relevant and entertaining interactions that always seem fresh and new.”

To support his spot-on core point that “the old set of skills and conventional deployment will not work,” Chris Kuenne offered a sports analogy:

In [American] football, everyone is a specialist with a distinct position and responsibility. Each player goes one-on-one against his opponent, helping the team advance the ball in a linear fashion down the field. Marketing over the past 50 years reflected this linear approach, in which a brand’s marketing plan specified a highly planned, seldom altered, set of initiatives…Today marketing is closer to rugby. All players handle multiple roles, using many different skills…

I agree with Chris Kuenne’s historical and current assessment of the marketing function. However, Chris’ description of football is outdated: today’s game of football is actually brimming with innovative tactics. Perhaps I underappreciate the tactics in rugby, but I see a lot of parallels between the practices of winning “new rules” marketing organizations and winning football teams:

Transformation through Innovation. Both football and today’s marketing function have benefited dramatically from innovation.  The one-on-one, seldom-altered, linear genre of football described by Chris Kuenne is an accurate description of the “smashmouth” version of the sport as it was played over a century ago, as exemplified by the feared Army football team and its predictable but brutal, physically punishing running game.

And so it went, until Notre Dame, in 1913, under new coach Jess Harper, unveiled an innovation that would thankfully transform the game: Notre Dame took unprecedented full advantage of the forward pass (!), recently legalized but widely ignored. Practiced that summer by quarterback Gus Dorais and offensive end and legend-to-be Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s passing plays bewildered the Army defense for a lopsided 35-13 upset victory. (Of course, clever, daring plays unimaginable even a decade ago continue an ever-accelerating trend of innovation on the football field.)

It is amazing in hindsight that marketing has not experienced such dramatic transformation until recently. At roughly the same time as Notre Dame’s game-transforming forward pass innovation, John Wanamaker, the pioneer of the department store, made his famous remark, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”  Similar frustrations by marketers have continued on right up to present day!  Thankfully, marketing innovations today are replacing decades of plodding, seldom-altered, and maddeningly difficult to measure interruption marketing with a still-evolving paradigm of content marketing, permission marketing and marketing automation technologies. The marketing function is finally undergoing its own game-changing, “forward pass” of innovation and transformation. More >>

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“Missionary” Technology Really Requires a Technology Evangelist

February 20, 2011

A technology evangelist “promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, demonstrations, [etc.]…The word ‘evangelism’ is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information…”  (Source: Wikipedia)

I recently came across a blog post by technical writing and communications professional Dr. Ugur Akinci, who wondered aloud whether there was a better term to describe the title of Technology Evangelist. Ugur Akinci noted the dictionary definitions of evangelism in its original religious context; those definitions suggest communication that is, among other things, decidedly one-way. Point well taken, but none of the other alternative titles suggested – technology communicator, ambassador, champion, advocate, enthusiator (the latter one intended to provide a chuckle!) – comes close to conveying the role as vividly as Guy Kawasaki’s original term of technology evangelist: the active persuasion of people to buy into the superiority of his/her particular technology product and help spread the word about it.

Actually, the term technology evangelist becomes even more appropriate if we use more secularized religious terminology to describe the product offering itself. I have in mind an article product management professional Jacques Murphy wrote a few years ago, asking a still-timely question: Is Your Product a Missionary or a Savior?

(W)hile every (software) company wants their product to be brand spanking new, there are two very distinct strains of newness: the Missionary and the Savior. And one of those two types is a much harder sell…The Missionary product…represents a new idea or a whole new take on an old idea. Nobody has heard of it and your company is in the position of telling others about it and convincing them of how important it is…

With a Savior product, the market comes running out into the streets to greet it, cheering it along all the way. The Missionary product has to go exploring into lands unknown to make converts through its boundless zeal.

Of course, Jacques Murphy’s “market running and cheering to greet a Savior product” hyperbole has since become literally true many times over by Apple’s amazing run of true Savior products. As for software, particularly in the B2B space, every product will have some missionary, or educational, aspect to it. You will always need to effectively convey your understanding of your customers’ problems and how and why your product solves these problems in ways far superior to your competitors. Every software solution requires effective product marketing, and benefits greatly from technology evangelism.

But a ”true” Missionary product will also offer a very different solution to fulfilling a need; a solution that might even be openly contrarian to current conventional wisdom; a solution that is proven to yield unique and compelling benefits for your customers, but in very new ways. Having a technology evangelist, a name and face for the product, actively advocating your unique, even contrarian solution to the market, becomes absolutely crucial, absolutely vital.

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“Everything I Really Need to Know About Product Marketing I Learned in Elementary School”

February 2, 2011

Dr. Stuart Payne is Principal of Northwood Elementary School, a National Blue-Ribbon School and California Distinguished School in Irvine, California. I am also quite proud to call Stuart Payne my brother-in-law.

I was already impressed with the work of Stu – I mean Dr. Stuart Payne – and his staff, and yet was even more so after reading his Principal’s Message in the latest issue of Northwood Elementary’s impressive parents newsletter, which summarized the goals he and his teaching staff set for 2011:

At the beginning of this year, our dedicated staff set…three goals for ourselves: (1) Rigor, (2) Differentiation, and (3) Progress Monitoring.

These succinct goals no doubt rang true for Northwood Elementary parents.   In fact, they rang quite true for me in my world of product marketing.  Let’s look at each one more closely:

Photo by courosa (Flickr CC)

Rigor.  Stuart Payne writes: “Through rigor, we endeavor to make sure that every child is challenged in a developmentally appropriate manner.”  This vital educational goal can be easily adapted to product marketing/product management terms: We must challenge ourselves to really understand our products and our markets, and convey our value in a compelling manner that our target markets will understand and be motivated to learn more.  I am reminded of a blog post by Dave Kellogg (MarkLogic CEO for six years) on applying (rigorous) critical thinking for effective product positioning (I elaborate on Dave Kellogg’s fine post here, BTW).

One sidenote: Stuart Payne also wrote: “(R)esearch indicates…that when the work is too difficult, (students) become frustrated.”  This reminded me of a classic blog post by Kathy Sierra: Do your customers feel a similar sense of frustration trying to understand and/or use our products?  Why?  How can this be corrected (and fast)?

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Happy New Year: Top Blog Posts for 2010

December 31, 2010

I hope you have a very happy, healthy and successful 2011!   Thank you very much for reading this blog, whether this is your first visit or one of many. 

Here are the three most popular blog entries of 2010, with a new year’s resolution to write many more in the new year!  Please enjoy.

UPDATE:  Moments after tweeting my resolution to blog more often in 2011, I see I am being held accountable (!) by WordPress’ PostADay / PostAWeek Challenge.  OK, WordPress, count me in … for the PostAWeek, that is!

 

The most popular post overall during 2010 was actually a 2009 post: 

Poor Communication can Scuttle Effective BI, Your Personal Brand, and a Simple Bus Ride 

 

Top 3 most popular posts added in 2010:

1.  Not All Interruption Marketing is Bad 

2.  Play the Product Marketing Game Like a Chess Grandmaster

3.  Animal Metaphor Farm: Don’t be a “Gorilla” or “Eagle” in Business … Be a Crow

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Play the Product Marketing Game Like a Chess Grandmaster

October 18, 2010

In an earlier life I was a fairly good chess player. I still play occasionally; one of my favorite times in London a few years ago was chatting with locals at the Churchill Arms over a pint and chess (UK 3 – US 0, I’m afraid).

Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the best chess books of all time for those seriously interested in becoming very good players is Play Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov. Unlike many chess books preoccupied with theory and opening lines of play which often become obsolete over just a few years, Kotov’s 1978 book remains as valuable as when it was first published, with chess advice bearing interesting similarities to the results-oriented Pragmatic Marketing training for Product Marketers.

From Kotov’s book:

The player who wishes to improve, who wants to win in competitive play, must develop his ability to assess positions, and on that basis work out plans for what comes next…[Specifically, after the player] has worked out the relationship of the [position's] elements to each other, the player moves on to general assessment [and then] proceeds to the next step, when (s)he draws up a plan for what follows (emphasis added).

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Of Seeing Eye Dogs and Intelligently Disobedient Business Intelligence Use and Product Marketing/Product Management

June 11, 2010

Photo by Zevotron (Flickr CC)

I have written before about the risks of misusing business intelligence software and misinterpreting business intelligence data results.  To help avoid these and many other business risks, organizations should encourage employees to be “intelligently disobedient.”

This term is from a great article by The Leader as a Mensch (click for my review) author Bruna Martinuzzi which cleverly presents this highly beneficial trait:

I once worked for a technology company that encouraged employees to practice what they called “Intelligent Disobedience.” The concept originates from Seeing Eye dogs: while dogs must learn to obey the commands of a blind person, they must also know when they need to disobey commands that can put the owner in harm’s way, such as when a car is approaching.

Intelligent disobedience is not about setting out to be disagreeable or arbitrarily disobeying rules for its own sake. Rather, it is about using your judgment to decide when, for example, an established rule actually hinders your organization, rather than helps it…the antonym of intelligent disobedience is blind conformity.

That blind conformity, all too rampant in weakly-run organizations with executives preoccupied with loyalty, can rear its head any number of ways, including using business intelligence/business performance management software to “do the wrong things right.”  Blind conformity can also result in incuriously sticking to conventional wisdom within product marketing or product management, resulting in, for example, a preoccupation with competitors instead of actively differentiating your products from the market.

Bruna Martinuzzi offers a number of ideas to encourage cultivating an environment of intelligent disobedience, several of which are directly applicable to the wise interpreter of business intelligence data, as well as product marketers and product managers, including the following…

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